If you are someone with a disability, or have a child or another person in your family with a disability, navigating everyday experiences such as dining out can be a challenge, if those establishments do not create an accessible environment. Special Education Professor Meghan Burke, along with undergraduate and graduate students in special education, the James Scholar honors program and student interns from Applied Technologies for Learning in the Arts and Sciences, are aiming to alleviate this with their new website, Access Urbana-Champaign.
They’ve evaluated 117 local restaurants based on a series of questions related to things like parking, spacing of tables and chairs, allowance of service animals, restroom accessibility, etc. Restaurants receive a rating of excellent, good, or limited based on the answers to these questions.
You can read more about the project here.
Screenshot from Access Urbana-Champaign website